


The Long Game

by nekare



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, First Time, Getting Together, OT3-ish, Spies & Secret Agents, goddamn this movie stole my brain, only not really, they're just too darling as a team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-24 19:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4932928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nekare/pseuds/nekare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Gaby kisses Illya, she’s playing Solo’s wife. The second time, if it can even be called a kiss, Illya is bleeding out. It seems to be a trend with them.</p>
<p>In which life as a spy isn’t quite what Gaby expected, and neither is Illya.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Game

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically my love letter to Gaby Teller, who for me was the brightest, most interesting part of the movie <3
> 
> Thanks so much to [Batmandeh](http://batmandeh.tumblr.com/) for the beta!

Gaby learns to dance on her own, in her foster father's tiny little kitchen with bootlegged records made out of leftover x-rays and pirate radio broadcasts, oh so quiet because you never know who might be listening, in East Berlin. After, there are barre classes and rehearsals and painful pointe shoes; but first, there is this - her and her stolen music.

It becomes her own little ritual. She sways to the music with her eyes closed, still covered in grease from work and with water boiling on the stove, and resolutely doesn't think of the father that could take her out, of the little dog and little family in the rare pictures he’s sent her. She doesn’t think of the lines she’ll have to stand in tomorrow or the friends that are suddenly gone or the questioning looks she gets from clients when a small girl turns out to be their mechanic.

She just lets the music go through her, teeth on her lips trying to stop the smile that insists on slipping out when she thinks of the British man that came to her that day with an offer. Finally, a way out.

 

\----

 

After Istanbul there is Sicily, and then Copenhagen, and then Reims where Gaby gets shot and Solo gets stabbed, so they stop and regroup, for a while.

For all that she is nominally SIS, she’s barely seen London at all, and now she sees it through the hospital’s darkened windows. She wasn’t expecting the seagulls, or the way that even East Berlin had more sunshine. She also wasn’t expecting a foot fracture being the most annoying bit of getting shot at. Dramatic blood and tears, yes. A cast with Solo’s lopsided signature on it, not so much.

She manages to annoy Illya into bringing her ice cream instead of the hospital’s horrible jelly though, and then has him sit beside her wet and grumpy from the rain with a tiny ice cream cup in his big hands, so it’s not so bad.

Three weeks after leaving the hospital and into her obligatory medical rest, she's already considered a menace in crutches by half the personnel in UNCLE headquarters, as she tears up and down the place, bored out of her mind. Fifteen year old Gaby, the one that practiced arabesques in her cramped room and was forever trying to get auditions in West Germany, would be horrified at how blasé she is about her injury. All she cares about now is knowing she’ll still be able to run fast from explosions after the cast comes off.

"Jesus, if I take you shopping, will you _stop_ already?" says Solo, by the third time she circles his table at the canteen, hitting tables and people alike. She magnanimously agrees, and off they go down Oxford Street and then Savile Row when Solo gets tired of her having all the fun. Then they go for a drink, and then three more, and then a black cab tour of the main sights when, already halfway into drunk, Solo finds out how little she’s seen of London.

They walk down the embankment, stumbling under a shared umbrella and pointing excitedly at everything, like a picture of sad cliche tourists. Gaby has never been a tourist though, unless she’s playing one for a mission, and it’s almost exciting. She pokes at him with one of her crutches, tells him to go get her some postcards and more drinks.

When Illya finds them, probably having bugged them, they’re sitting by the Thames, their feet dangling over the dark water and drunk enough he’s surprised neither of them have fallen in. Gaby offers him the horribly overpriced bottle of champagne they’ve been sharing, and he surprises them both into cheering when he takes a long drink after staring at the label. 

They stay there for a long while, probably the longest they’ve been together while not working. They pass the bottle back and forth, until it’s gone and all the bubbles left are in their silly laughter, in the way Gaby tries to walk down the parapet, cast and all, and ends up losing a shoe to the water. “Won’t you jump in and get it for me?” she pleads, and instead Illya grabs her by the waist and puts her back on the floor, slow and gentle as he fakes a scowl and scolds her about those shoes being worth a small fortune. He should know, he got them for her.

Gaby’s too drunk for crutches, so after they pour Solo into a cab Illya ends up having to give her a piggyback ride up to the tiny flat UNCLE’s shelling out for her, two blocks from his own. She rests her chin on his shoulder and smiles at the way everything sways so gently; at the way his thumbs rub little circles into her legs.

She starts humming as he walks, just a tiny sound as she closes her eyes and curls even further into his warm back. He starts humming along with her, and she must make a surprised sound at him knowing the song, because he turns to look at her over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised. “I listen to radio,” he says, somewhat defensively, and she laughs a little into his jacket.

“There is hope for you still, then,” she teases.

He puts her to bed, a slow slide of skin as she clings a little to his neck, and she’s so very tempted to pull him down beside her, to just tug him closer. But he turns around to set her crutches carefully against her nightside table, and the moment is gone. He turns the lights off on his way out and locks the door, the perfect gentleman, but part of her wishes he’d chosen to fight again instead. 

The less it is spoken about her hangover the next day, the better. Much to everybody’s annoyance however, Solo is bright and cheerful, downright perky as she hides behind her round sunglasses during their daily meeting with Waverly. Illya’s looking a bit green, much to her pleasure.

The day the cast comes off, she goes driving very, very fast on a very, very dangerous road down near Devon, the wind in her hair as she goes through the tiny roads as fast as she can, her still tender foot pressing hard down on the gas. She’s spent enough time behind walls to not think of that cast as one.

 

\----

 

Illya is barely restrained violence under the sheer veneer of a man, his body perpetually tense with a low simmering rage; and yet he looks at her as if she was both his redemption and executioner all at once, like he wants nothing more than to let her root into his insides and tear him apart and then claim whatever remains for her own.

It’s a heady thing, being under his unwavering gaze, having this large attack dog shiver whenever she so much as comes close to him - having him at her beck and call. 

It should probably scare her a lot more than it does. Instead, she revels in the way it thrills her.

 

\----

 

“Can you fight?” Illya asks her as she’s reading Solo’s Vogue, her toes wriggling against the soft upholstery of the sofa after a day of pinching shoes.

“Now, you mean?” she looks at him over the Prada spread. He’s sitting in front of a half-finished chess game, fingers still on a knight as he looks at her. “I won our last match, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I was surprised,” he says, far too fast, and she chuckles.

“You tell yourself that,” she says with a dramatic turn of page. Oh, look, Balenciaga’s new collection.

“What I meant is, did they train you, when they recruited you? Can you fight?”

Gaby has been in fistfights in school, when her parents were mentioned. She’s been in awfully embarrassing, pointless screaming matches with friends that started with face scratching and ended with tears and hugs in the girls’ bathroom; has clamped the balls of a man that tried to touch her while she was seeing to his car, and once hit a man so hard with her wrench-filled purse that he dropped unconscious when he was trying to mug her.

She purses her lips. “I had a brief course,” she says, not mentioning it had been a two-hour crash course in not breaking her own bones if she had to punch someone. It had been hard enough, being trained as a spy without alerting her neighbors or the Stasi. “I had more of an emphasis in firearms.”

Illya nods slowly, puts one of his kings down and stands up before offering her a hand. “I will teach you.”

“Now?”

He shrugs. “You got anything better to do?” They’ve been stuck in London headquarters for two weeks already, growing steadily bored as they wait for a new assignment. They’re still pretty much the only field operatives UNCLE has, and the analysts and admin agents give them a wide berth. The three of them are almost as insulated as they usually are when out on the field, and it’s been driving them slightly stir crazy.

She takes his hand.

Two hours later, she is bruised and sweaty, angry at Illya and the way that he isn’t even out of breath. He circles her, pointing at mistakes in her posture, her footwork, or indeed, everything she’s doing. It reminds her terribly of her old ballet teachers, down to the accent. She’s tried tackling him twice, but it doesn’t work when he’s expecting it, and it all ended with her being thrown on her back on the gym’s mats.

After a particularly badly aimed punch at his face, he takes both of her hands in his. “No, no, no. Not like this. Is like _dancing_ ,” he says, impatient. 

“I thought you didn’t dance,” she says, blowing sweaty hair off her forehead.

“But you can, and you are good at it, which means you have the balance, the - the coordination, to fight.” He’s struggling with his words, trying to find the right analogies for her. She wonders how _he_ learned. She somehow doubts anyone held his hands so gently and walked him through an aggressive waltz to get his footwork to improve.

It works though - she’s less awkward and more aware of her body when it feels like a choreography. Less foreign to her muscle memory. 

“It’s not like an actual enemy’s gonna wait for me to remember the steps,” she says, after he taps at her leg when she forgets what follows in the exercise. 

“No, but you are just learning. Wait until I’m done with you,” he says with a small smile, his eyes bright and clear. She likes him like this, the easy way they are together. 

She smiles back and then kicks his knee hard enough to make him stumble a bit before aiming a punch to the side of his head.

He grabs her arm and twists her around so her back is flush to his front, their twined arms in between them and digging into her back painfully. She struggles, but she can’t get free without hurting herself. She tries dropping her weight forward, but the arm around her tightens and draws her back to him. He lifts her off her feet, until she’s standing on tiptoe with her back arched, the movement bringing his mouth enticingly close to her neck.

She gasps, not exactly in pain, and his hold on her becomes gentler, though he doesn’t release her. He slowly curls himself around her until her feet are flat on the ground again, the hand wrapped around her middle grabbing a fistful of her shirt, while his other hand lets her arm slide until it’s dangling between them, pins and needles coursing through her fingertips.

She can feel his quickening breath on her nape, warm and damp against her skin; can smell him all around her, deep and musky. They stand there for a moment, their breathing loud in the empty room, until Illya nuzzles his nose against the shell of her ear, and then she can feel herself shiver, her cheeks growing hot. He drags his lips lazily across her cheek as she turns her head slowly, eyes already closing.

There’s clapping from the other side of the room, and they move apart fast. “Well that was educational,” Solo says, looking far too smug for his own good. Instinct makes her want to look away, so she stubbornly glares right back at him instead. “Gaby, not too shabby. Remember to use your weight, you could’ve thrown him on his face if you’d got him off balance. Illya, you are an absolute fool.”

Illya bares his teeth at him but stays silent, so Gaby says, with hands on her waist, “Well why don’t _you_ have a go at it?” 

Solo looks surprised for only a minute, and then he rubs his hands together and gives them a wide grin. “Why not? I could do with letting off some steam, and _God knows_ Peril needs it too,” he says, as Illya rolls his eyes. “Should be fun.”

“Your grave, Cowboy.”

It is, indeed, fun. Or at least, it is for Gaby, who gets to look at them and laugh, because once they’re no longer trying to kill each other, they end up rolling around like children, taunting and biting and scratching and leaving all kind of proper fighting technique behind. 

“Maybe you do dance after all,” Gaby tells Illya before they leave the gym, and he just laughs to himself softly.

 

\----

 

Their next mission, Gaby breaks the knee of the henchman trying to kidnap her, and Illya looks far too proud.

 

\----

 

Their car breaks down while in the middle of nowhere in Estonia, and both men turn to look at her as she paints her toenails in the backseat. With a sigh, she angles her feet towards Illya - he glares at her, but he does blow at the drying nail polish.

“I told you there was a funny sound to it,” she says primly.

Solo scoffs. “Yes and I told you, it’s a soviet car, it’d be strange if it _didn’t_ have a funny sound to it.”

“Soviet cars not good enough for you, Cowboy?” Illya says in a prissy voice, his fingers curling around the delicate bones of her ankle. It feels lovely, and it fills her with ideas. 

Solo gestures towards the motionless car, to the empty road and the falling sun. “ _Obviously not_ , unless you like reaching nowhere. Oh, wait, it seems like you do,” he adds, pointing at Illya holding Gaby’s feet, and Gaby rolls her eyes at the way Illya drops them like they’re hot, immediately tensing for a fight. 

The sound of their bickering follows her as she takes off her hat, puts her shoes back on and gets underneath the car, a constant murmur at the edge of her consciousness that has become so commonplace that it’s starting to feel soothing. 

Until they start complaining that she’s not working fast enough, that is. Then she slips out from the car, stops the first passing truck and watches their angry figures getting smaller by the side of the road as she and a cheery pig farmer speed off towards the next town. That’ll teach them.

 

\----

 

“My father could’ve gotten me out, couldn’t he?” Gaby asks once, after a mission has gone completely fucked up and they’re licking their wounds with stolen bourbon. They’re sitting on the porch of a gorgeous, historic house in Maine that Solo so obviously shouldn’t be able to afford, but that is just as obviously his, with rooms filled with the priceless paintings he couldn’t stomach to sell. A year ago, Solo would have never let them see this place, this piece of himself. By now, the three of them are so entwined with each other that it’s barely surprising.

“Gaby--” Illya starts to say with a frown, but Solo cuts him off.

“Do you want the truth or the pretty story?”

“Truth,” she says, and holds her glass out for Illya to pour her more bourbon. 

He nods. “He was really high up. Had good pals in the government. He had strings, and he didn’t pull them.” 

She nods as well, and lets him top up her glass. Illya moves closer silently, and the three of them drink some more, staring ahead into the trees, shivering slightly in the dusk’s chill.

She always knew, really. But it still stings.

 

\----

 

The first time she kisses Illya, Gaby is playing Solo’s wife.

They’re ransacking a Greek millionaire’s office, the lavish party outside still loud through the walls. Somewhere, hopefully across the estate, Solo is distracting their mark, and meanwhile Gaby and Illya are growing more frenzied by the minute, running into each other as they hurry on the search for anything worthwhile. They’re running out of time, and have found nothing to show for it. 

Gaby’s looking behind a painting next to the door for the second time when she suddenly hears Solo’s voice coming down the hallway, purposefully loud as he chatters on about how really, it's no problem at all and this could absolutely wait until tomorrow, and is he _sure_ he wouldn’t rather be going back to the party?

She whirls around towards Illya, who is still looking for hidden compartments in a bookcase, and the only thing she can think of in her panic is to stride towards him, push him onto the desk, and kiss his surprised mouth. She half climbs him - a knee on the desk next to his thigh - and swallows the tiny shocked noise he breathes out, her hands holding his face steady for her even though it’s hardly needed, with the way his entire body curls into her. 

He _melts_ against her, body shivering as he opens his mouth to deepen the kiss, his arms going around her. She opens her eyes for a moment at the sheer intensity of it, overwhelmed, and then clenches them back shut again when she sees the look on his face, the awe he’s not even trying to hide. She can feel herself growing hot, body slumping against Illya’s as he kisses the corner of her mouth before going back to suck at her lower lip.

“Gaby,” he whispers, so, so low, and she kisses him again to make him silent, buries her hands in his hair.

By the time the door opens, she’s almost forgotten why she’s doing this, and she barely has to act surprised at the loud gasps from the doorway. Her eyes are fixed on Solo’s as she climbs down from the desk, so she can’t see the look on Illya’s face when she says, loudly, “Darling! I can explain!”

To his credit, Solo gets on with the act immediately. “I knew it!” he says, and he lets himself be pushed back by Gaby on his way to go hit Illya, the very picture of the scorned husband while their mark stands by the doorway, shocked into silence for once in this whole damn evening.

_It meant nothing,_ Gaby shrieks, _Don’t you dare lie,_ answers Solo, and meanwhile Illya has finally shaken the surprise off his eyes and lifts himself off the desk to join the play, and then they’re pushing Gaby away and hitting each other and wrecking the room, and eventually, falling into the pool outside over Mrs. Warren’s honor, much to the amusement of the entire party. 

Much, much later, they finally slide into their car on the way to their safe house, wet and sweaty all three of them. Gaby’s hands are tight on the steering wheel as she drives way too fast on the narrow roads, adrenaline still surging through her. 

“That was some good thinking, Peril, didn’t think you’d have it in you,” Solo says, drying his face with a napkin he must’ve stolen before leaving the party. 

“Wasn’t my idea,” says Illya, resolutely looking out the window into the blackness, and Gaby turns to look at him, at the long, tense line of his body, the way he’s clenching his teeth. He’s furious, and when he briefly turns towards her to find her staring, she can see the embarrassment there as well, color high on his cheeks before he turns back to the window. 

She looks at Solo instead through the rearview mirror, and regrets it when she sees his smug face. 

“Well then, good thinking Gaby, flashy but serviceable.” 

“As I recall it wasn’t me breaking a statue to hit Illya with,” she says with a raised eyebrow, and he chuckles.

“Yes, not good at that subtlety thing, are you, Cowboy?” Illya says, trying for casual and just sounding stilted. His lips are still red from her lipstick, and it makes something deep inside her flutter. He hadn’t known they were about to be made, Gaby realises, and he had been achingly honest, and now it’s just a joke for Solo to tell at UNCLE’s headquarters, and for Gaby to get creativity points during her annual evaluation.

She bites her lip for a moment, and then, all of the sudden, she is scorchingly mad. He can’t fault her for doing her _job_. Not even if it gets in the way of his stupid pride and all the unsaid things between them. 

If he won’t be the professional one then, she will be. “In any case, Mr. and Mrs. Warren, not to speak of their chauffeur, probably won’t be very welcome and Mavros’ house anymore. Any ideas?”

Solo makes a dismissive gesture. “Might be a good thing actually. I’m a recently jilted man, I can’t be blamed if I want my friends to take me out for some booze and strippers to lift up my spirits.”

Gaby wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”

“But useful,” says Illya with a grunt. He’s touching his lips, unknowingly spreading the lipstick smear further, but stops when Solo laughs and throws his sodden napkin at him. 

“Clean up, Peril, that’s not exactly your shade.”

The ensuing squabble after Illya half climbs into the backseat is most definitely childish, but it does clear the air afterwards, and by the time they get to their run-down safe house no one seems on the verge of throttling the others. The mission’s budget went into the flashy Bentley their cover demanded, so home for the night is a large room with three rickety cots and a portable gas cooker. It’s a bit dreadful, especially as she has to chase spiders off her sheets before getting to bed, but for once she is grateful she’s not sharing a room with Illya alone.

By now she is used to the sounds of the boys settling for the night, the small cots complaining under their weight. She can’t help but sneak a look at Illya, looking comical with his feet sticking out of the bed before he curls himself into a tight ball, trying to get most of his limbs inside the covers. He looks grumpy - he always does in small beds - and it’s unbearably charming. He must feel her gaze, because he opens his eyes to look at her, holding her own for a moment before she hastily turns around in her cot, willing herself not to blush. She’s not a schoolgirl. This nonsense has to stop.

Still, she dreams of him, waking up wet and irritable, with a hand pressed stupidly to her lips. The thing is, she now knows what he tastes like, knows how his large hands fit around her back and on the back of her neck; the way she fits seamlessly between his legs. 

She’d wanted, before, but now she’s burning.

Annoyingly enough, Solo is right, and after much boozing and a whole lot of strippers, the mission is completed with barely a hitch, and then it’s back to London with them.

 

\----

 

They’re awkward for weeks, through downtime and the next mission, stilted around each other. Solo is despairing, throwing hints around that he’s dropping them for more entertaining people if they don’t stop it already.

Then, Illya gets shot.

She and Solo manage to drag him to the relatively warm office of a warehouse, but Illya’s lips still look blue, and his entire front looks red, and the bleeding is _not stopping_ , and even Solo looks unsettled, occasionally slapping Illya on the face to keep him awake. 

“Is cold,” Illya says, half out of it, his eyes glassy. Both Gaby and Solo have blood up to their elbows, and Illya’s face in contrast is startlingly pale. 

“No shit,” says Solo. Sleet is coming in through the broken window, but he’s still sweating with the effort of putting pressure on the wound. 

Gaby finds an aging bottle of vodka in a drawer, and she alternates between dousing the bullet wound with it and putting it to Illya’s lips, encouraging him to have small sips. He takes one of her hands, and so very, very slow, takes it to his mouth to place a kiss on her fingertips, leaving red streaks on his lips. His eyes are closed, and his breathing is slowing. She wants to cry, so she wrenches her hand free and uses it to slap him sharply across the cheek, startling him into opening his eyes.

“No,” she says. “Stop it. Not like this.”

She removes the tracker from the sole of her boot and turns it off and back on in frenzied morse code, their established SOS with Waverly. Her fingers are slippery with blood, so she thinks this rather qualifies at the emergency they had been warned to save it for.

Extractions are a tricky thing. They require cooperation between several intelligence agencies, and blown covers, and surprisingly big sums of money. But Illya gets surgery in Sarajevo four hours after being shot, and she and Solo sit in a depressing gray waiting room and drink bad coffee in silence, with Waverly pacing around them.

By the time Illya wakes up two days later, Solo has covered his bed in crooked, cheap plush bears, and Waverly is still off being very charming at this or that ambassador over a briefcase phone held by a long-suffering junior agent. Illya looks horribly pale, his eyelashes even more striking against the translucent sheen of his skin, but he’s alive, and so before she leaves for her hotel for the night, she grasps his hand lightly, and brings his fingertips up to her lips for a kiss. He smiles at her, just a bit, drowsy with the ridiculous amount of morphine they have him on.

“You should apologize,” she tells him, as she puts his hand back on the bed.

“No. I should thank you, for the vodka.” She snorts. “So thank you for the vodka, chop shop girl, it was decent. Not as good as Russian vodka, though, of course.”

“Of course. Sleep well, Illya.” 

He stays in hospital for five more days, but it’s not until the third night that she realizes he’s finally looking her in the eye again.

 

\----

 

In Prague, after a day of following the most boring arms dealer in the history of crime, Gaby watches Illya from the bedroom doorway of their suite, doing slow relevés to get her feet to relax after the punishing heels she wore all day. He’s aware of her staring, and is doing a charming kind of awkward posturing as he tries to look intense while playing chess with himself.

She had also been staring that morning as he went through training exercises with the coffee table pushed all the way back into the wall, moving so fluidly that she could have almost forgotten he’d been shot just a month and a half ago. He still has a scar though, looking almost commonplace next to the other fifteen that she has seen, scattered through his upper body and finishing with the one near his eye. She still dreams about his bloodied lips sometimes though, and knows that could be her any day. 

She is done with waiting.

She walks to him and sits on the table right in front of his chess board, bumping it back. She then takes his black queen, makes a show of holding it up to him and taking it back sharply when he tries to grab it.

“Put that back,” he says, but he doesn’t look nearly as annoyed as he wants to make her believe. There is a twitch right on the corner of his mouth, a smile dying to come out. They’ve been here before, after all. Countless moments of _almost_. She’s so tired of almost.

“What will you give me for it?” 

“What do you want?” He’s leaning forwards just ever so slightly, looking at her from under his long lashes. 

“I think I want a kiss,” she says with her chin up high and a wry turn to her mouth. She taps the queen to her lips, and feels a rush of excitement as his eyes darken. 

“I don’t know,” he says, aiming for casual. “Queens are important pieces. Surely worth more than a kiss.”

“Make it a good one, then, and we’ll see.” 

They’re already close enough, but instead of leaning forward, Illya puts his hands on her hips, pulling just ever so slightly to hint that she should move. She goes, dangling the chess piece above his head as she slowly straddles him on the couch, her dress riding up her thighs as she settles with her knees brushing his legs. His hands slide to her back, dipping into the open back of her dress and dragging her even closer. Like this, she can smell nothing but him, and his eyes look so blue around the blown pupils, his breath warm on her neck. She touches her nose to his, eyes falling closed, savoring this very last moment of possibility before they can’t hide from this anymore, and so it is him that is done with patience and leans in the last inch to press his mouth to hers.

He still tastes like the scotch the three of them had in the hotel lobby as they kept tabs on their mark, and it’s ever so sweet as he he kisses her hot and deep, bypassing gentle entirely in favor of biting her lips until they’re tender, and then soothing the ache away with his tongue, making her sigh deeply. 

She breaks apart, breathless, and he says into her skin, cheeky as anything, “Good enough for you?”

She laughs, exhilarated, says, “You can shut up now,” and kisses him again, pressing his shoulders against the couch until she’s pretty much bent over him, in complete control of the kiss. She makes it dirty, pulls at his hair, and he melts underneath her, desperate for anything she’ll give him. Neither of them notices when the queen falls to the ground.

She rocks her hips against his, his dick already a hard line against her, and wants to commit his soft curse to memory. She does it again, and then gestures for him to unzip her dress. They pull it over her head together, and his mouth is immediately at her breasts, teasing and biting softly through her bra. 

When she gets up to her knees briefly to unzip his trousers and pull his cock out, Illya sighs against her chest, and then looks up to her with such a worshipful expression that it almost makes her rethink this - almost, because he then he slides his fingers against her clit through her panties before pulling the thin cotton aside and pressing them inside her almost roughly, exactly what she needs right now, and she forgets all about it. 

They kiss as he fucks her so sweetly with his fingers, as she tugs a condom out from one of the hidden pockets she has sewn into every dress she owns, usually used for guns, bugs, and assorted poisons; still useful for more creative means. 

He tries to get up and take her with him, hands spread on her ass, but she pushes with her weight forward until he’s sitting again, her hands pushing against his shoulders. His breathing goes erratic, and she can feel his cock jumping against her leg, and she is ever so pleased. Of course he’d love to be pushed around. Of course. She bites at his earlobe, and he stays put like a good boy as she sinks down onto him. They gasp together, kiss again until it’s just sharing air as they find a rhythm. 

She rides him fast, arms around his neck with his mouth on her chin, nuzzling down her neck as she pants with her head thrown back, lost in sensation. She comes with one of his hands in between them and the other tangled in her sweaty hair, muttering her name into her neck. It’s so intense it almost hurts, afterwards, and she has to take a minute before she can rock her hips once more, intent in having him come for her too.

When he does, he looks absolutely wrecked, his brows together and teeth on his lower lip as he falls apart. Beautiful.

She kisses his mouth softly, after his breathing is normal again. “This is such a stupid idea,” she says, and he just nods sleepily, not even trying to deny it. 

“But did I win my queen back?” he asks drowsily against her shoulder, and she has to laugh. 

“We’ll have to see, I guess.”

“Alright. I can do that,” he says, and this time she does let him get up and take her to bed, nearly stumbling down with his pants around his ankles. It’s nowhere near the first time she’s shared a bed with him, but it’s the first time that they both allow themselves to touch as much as they want, the simple comfort of Illya stroking her back as he buries his face in her neck as they both edge slowly into sleep.

Just before his breathing evens, she says, so low that she almost hopes he’ll miss it, “Sometimes, I’m afraid I’ll break you.”

She doesn’t expect him to say anything back, so she’s surprised when he whispers, “And sometimes I’m afraid I would let you.” She burrows into his warmth, and finally closes her eyes.

It’s a bit of a comfort, knowing they both know how high the stakes are.

 

\----

 

In Cairo, they trash another hotel room. They roll all over the floor, breaking lamps and kicking furniture as they suck bruises on each other's skin, laughing like stupid teenagers with a crush.

She stops laughing by the time he starts eating her out, his head stuck awkwardly under her dress, and then it's all heavy sighs and the haze of pleasure as he lavishes her cunt, his hips pressed into the carpet looking for some release. She loves how eager he is, how desperate to please, and how vulnerable his eyes are when he's starving for her. It drives her a bit crazy, how he shivers with the effort to control himself. 

When that control snaps, she tends to get fucked against walls and windows and furniture, and how she loves that as well. 

After, they lie entangled in the heavy carpet, surrounded by bits of ceramic and wilting flowers, sweaty and messy. 

“Waverly asked me about us,” Illya says stiffly after a while.

“Hmm. And what did you say?” 

“That it’s not any of his fucking business,” he says, and Gaby sighs deeply.

“Illya. That was not very smart.”

He sighs as well, curls a piece of her hair around his finger. “I know. He gave one of his massive eye rolls, you know the ones? Anyway, he said he wouldn’t tell.”

“To the KGB, you mean?”

“Yes. If you were soviet agent, they would not mind. But you’re a defector. And I’m already under suspicion.”

“Because of your bourgeois tastes, I assume?” That gets a laugh out of him, and she’s sleepy and content, and does not want to think about their bosses and their allegiances and their lies, not while he’s staring at her so earnestly and his thumb is stroking her shoulder, so she presses it. “You must’ve been a riot at Soviet parties, with you prattling on about Dior and Chanel.”

“I did not see you complaining about Chanel when I got you that bag,” he says, and she punches lightly at his arm before he gets serious again. “Gaby--”

“I know. Let’s not think about it.”

So they don’t, and instead they finally get up and move into bed and get sweaty and messy all over again.

When they get out of the bedroom the next morning, Solo is drinking coffee on their balcony, reading the paper and picking at half of a grapefruit. They have to step over the sad remains of the coffee table and several flower vases to get to him.

“You _do_ know your bugs were still broadcasting last night, don’t you?” he says with raised eyebrows, smirking at their messy hair and messier clothes. 

Gaby’s known Solo far too long to blush. Before she can say anything though, Illya sits heavily at the table, and says, with a shrug, “I hope you were entertained.”

Solo laughs, deep and full. “I have to say, you’re never boring, Peril. Must be why I keep you around.”

“Must be, yes. That and your terrible spying abilities.” 

“Meanwhile, I, of course, keep you both for eye candy,” Gaby says, and gets nods and hums in return as she sits down, grabbing the international news section Solo is already holding out to her.

Gaby steals Solo’s croissants. Illya tangles his feet to her ankles. It’s a nice morning.

 

\----

 

It's not perfect. Illya is volatile and prone to rage, and she is too hardened to let someone in, too much of a survivor to let herself care too much. There's also the fact that for all intent and purposes they are owned by their employers, theirs to move like the pieces of chess Illya so likes to pretend to be in charge of.

Still, they make do. They steal kisses in shadowy doorways while being chased by armed men, fuck far too loud just to annoy Solo in the room next to them, and go driving for fun during downtime, making a courtship out of breaking each other out from cells/prisons/dungeons/random torture chambers from imaginative megalomaniacs (there was once a shark pit, of which they do not talk about).

Sometimes, maybe too often, it’s adrenaline rather than love. And then at others, they annoy each other so much that they end up laughing, and then it’s sweet as honey as he kisses her fingertips one by one and speaks nonsense to her in the fast Russian he does know better by now than think she can’t understand.

It works, much to their surprise.

 

\----

 

Spring in Seoul is lovely, white-hued with the cloud of cherry blossoms drifting down the streets. They've saved the world, diffused a bomb and defeated the evil mastermind, so Illya goes when Gaby takes his arm and drags him out for a walk, brushing petals off their heads. He's wearing a ring of his own this time around, and she's awfully, possessively pleased to see he either forgot or didn't care to take it off after the mission was done.

They get to see the sights for the first time in months, and Illya makes up ridiculous stories about everything they see, growing more extravagant and filled with daring Russian architects as her laughter becomes harder to hide. Two days ago, she shot someone without even giving it a second thought, and he strangled someone with his bare hands. Today, he smiled at the little old lady behind the counter of the café they had breakfast in, called her darling, and then held Gaby's hand over the table as he sipped his coffee. She still doesn't know him fully. But she wants to.

She sometimes wonders at how she ended up here, halfway around the world with this contrary man that has such a pull on her; how an orphan turned ballerina turned mechanic turned spy has so far lived to tell the tale.

More than a year and a half after Rome, Gaby stands on tiptoe to kiss Illya, just because - because they can and because they somehow are together, so far from home, so far from the way they met. She smiles into the kiss as he has to hunch over low to meet her halfway, and her smile gets bigger when she sees his suspicious look, the one he gives her when one of hers or Solo’s plans gets him chased, or shot at, or both.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” she says, as she kisses him again before pulling him in towards the shaved ice vendor near the corner. “I just realized I’m not scared anymore.”

One of these days, this is going to blow up on their faces, she knows that. Until then, she doesn't really care.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come join me obsess over this movie in [my tumblr!](http://nekare.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I tried my best to keep the anachronisms to a minimum, but I'm no historian, so please let me know if I got anything wrong!
> 
> [X-ray records were very much a real thing.](http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/30/5856838/soviet-x-ray-records-used-to-copy-and-spread-banned-music) They were used more broadly on the Soviet Union proper I think, and East Germany used more pirate radio broadcast, but I do think they had them as well, and it was too much a great detail to let it pass.
> 
> The earlier mention I could find of a briefcase phone in my admittedly small research was from 1969, but hell, they’re spies. And I just loved the idea of an overworked sad little junior agent tasked with following Waverly everywhere just holding up the briefcase phone. He’ll probably quit and become a basket weaver in a hippie commune within two years.


End file.
